As pointed out by Thomas E. Weber in an article published on Wall Street Journal (p. R10, Mar. 21, 1994), one of the major problems with the current remote control for televisions is that there are too many buttons on these remote controls. These remote controls are becoming more and more complicated, and less and less user-friendly. In this disclosure, I describe a hybrid remote that has fewer buttons and has cursor control capability implemented to make the remote more versatile and more user friendly. Only those frequently used buttons are implemented on the remote. And all the other buttons are replaced with one or more “mouse” buttons in combination with cursor control capability. Those frequently used buttons are used to perform the basic functions such as volume up and down, channel up and down, and mute. The “mouse” button is used to perform all the rest not so frequently used functions. Which particular function the “mouse” button performs depend on where the cursor appears on the television screen. The method of how to implement the cursor control capability for the above described hybrid remote is the subject of the current invention.
If any of these televisions need to be used as Internet terminals, the cursor control capability on the remote will become a necessary requirement. And in fact, for interactive televisions, the cursor control capability on the remote will become an absolutely necessary requirement.
At present, there have been several methods of adding cursor control capabilities to a remote. To add cursor control capabilities, some remotes use track balls, some use joysticks, some use touchpads, some use “air mouse” (e.g. Sony's Egg and Creative Labs' AeroMouse or AeroPen), and still some others use cursor keys. All the above mentioned methods can be used to make a hybrid remote that can control the cursor on a television screen. However, all these remotes have one common disadvantage: the cursor position can not be controlled intuitively, comfortably or conveniently by the standard of average home users. It is therefore imperative to invent a remote control that enables a user to control the cursor on a television screen more easily and more intuitively.
One of the most intuitive ways for a user to control the cursor position is to add a remote-pointing device to a remote control, and position the cursor at the aiming point on the television screen pointed by the remote-pointing device. With a remote-pointing device added to the remote control, the cursor appears conveniently at where the remote control pointed.
In order to place the cursor at the aiming point on a television screen, the television need to be able to determine the position of that aiming point. While there are many methods for implementing the remote-pointing device and many methods for finding the aiming point, it is rather challenge to do it very cheaply—preferably at a fraction of the cost of making the commonly used IR remotes.
In this document, I disclose a method for making an improved remote control for interactive televisions by adding a remote-pointing device to a conventional remote control. The remote-pointing device is chosen to be a light-scope, which consists of a lens system that define a very narrow filed of view and a photo detector. The light signal, detected by the photo detector, is converted into an electric signal. After amplification, the electric signal is used to drive an LED for sending a communicating light signal back to the television. The television uses the communicating light signal to determine the aiming point.